The Northridge earthquake inflicted various levels of damage upon a large number of Caltrans' bridges not retrofitted by column jacketing. In this respect, this study represents results of fragility curve development for two (2) sample bridges typical in southern California, strengthened for seismic retrofit by means of steel jacketing of bridge columns. Monte Carlo simulation is performed to study nonlinear dynamic responses of the bridges before and after column retrofit. Fragility curves in this study are represented by lognormal distribution functions with two parameters and developed as a function of PGA. The sixty (60) ground acceleration time histories for the Los Angeles area developed for the Federal Emergency Management Agcncy (FEMA) SAC (SEAOC-ATC-CUREe) steel project are used for the dynamic analysis of the bridges. The improvement in the fragility with steel jacketing is quantified by comparing fragility curves of the bridge before and after column retrofit. In this first attempt to formulate the problem of fragility enhancement, the quantification is made by comparing the median values of the fragility curves before and after the retrofit. Under the hypothesis that this quantification also applies to empirical fragility curves developed on the basis of Northridge earthquake damage, the enhanced version of the empirical curves is developed for the ensuing analysis to determine the enhancement of transportation network performance due to the retrofit.
To estimate seismic damage of structures under strong motions is very important to know true safety of structures. However, we have to deal with very small failure probability issue to investigate quantitatively. If we use standard MCS (Monte Calro Simulation) to discuss failure probability, e.g., 1 × 10 −6 order, since we have to execute nonlinear dynamic response analyses of approximate 10 7 times, it is not realistic. Recently, a subset simulation, which reduces the computation time by replacing small failure probability into the product of conditional failure probabilities, was proposed. In this study, the subset simulation is applied to estimate failure probability of an actual reinforced concrete building with 11 stories, and discuss the safety of the structure by checking with design criteria.
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